The Washington Submit investigates authorities corruption and incompetence. Whereas these investigations are usually on the nationwide degree, the Washington Submit continues to indicate how Florida’s insurance coverage regulators are failing Florida’s residents relating to property insurance coverage oversight and safety. At present’s article, How Florida Let a High Insurer Abandon Owners in Their Time of Biggest Want,1 is a must-read for everyone buying insurance coverage in Florida.
The article acknowledged partially:
Michael Yaworsky, Florida’s new insurance coverage commissioner, mentioned that state regulators had been on prime of monitoring UPC’s conduct and financials. In an interview, he defined how his workplace was ‘fairly aggressive when it got here to our response to the evolving scenario with United and UPC.’
‘We met the second every time one thing developed,’ he mentioned of UPC’s struggles.
An enormous drawback, Yaworsky identified, is that his workplace had been restricted in what they may do relating to how mum or dad firms act and what they do with their cash. He pointed to current laws, together with the brand new Insurer Accountability Act, that has given his company extra sources and attain to raised govern insurers, although the hardest provisions of the regulation had been stripped from the ultimate model. Officers have now pledged to completely examine UPC’s conduct and any allegations of unhealthy conduct.
UPC’s enterprise mannequin, insurance coverage and monetary consultants say, displays a lax regulatory framework that has made it even tougher for Florida residents to get again on their ft after disasters.
‘Insurance coverage firms have been given great quantity of leeway in Florida,’ Birny Birnbaum, the director of the Heart for Financial Justice and a former insurance coverage regulator mentioned in an interview. ‘Mild regulation let these smaller firms are available in and cherry decide what they wish to cowl. When there isn’t a hurricane, they will make an amazing sum of money. When there may be one, executives can stroll away with out a lot legal responsibility and so much richer.’
UPC was the insurance coverage firm I known as out for wrongly denying claims on a systemic foundation in Zeroed Out Hurricane Claims and Dishonest Claims Practices—Why Are Our Florida Politicians Ignoring These Ongoing Claims Issues and Seemingly Defending Dishonest Insurance coverage Firms. I criticized Florida’s legislators and regulators for not taking motion or making legal guidelines to guard Floridians from such wrongful conduct. The reality is almost all of Florida’s present legislators handed extra legal guidelines to guard UPC and different wrongfully performing insurance coverage firms. Yaworksy and Florida’s legislators know that the total extent of the laws took away policyholder rights and that the so-called Accountability Act is a whole sham made for public relations.
The Washington Submit article famous that neither Jimmy Patronis nor the Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation did something about these wrongful actions:
Patronis by no means responded…The Division of Monetary Providers, which Patronis oversees, mentioned that it regarded into Buvens’s allegations in 2021 however closed the probe attributable to his ‘lack of cooperation’ for an interview. The adjuster rejected that declare, saying he was dwelling in Texas and couldn’t go to Florida on the proposed dates attributable to earlier commitments, and supplied to do a digital interview. His a number of follow-up emails to the workplace went unanswered, he mentioned.
‘I merely wished Jimmy Patronis and the DFS to do their job that they had been elected to do,’ Buvens mentioned in an interview. ‘Examine the executives of this insurance coverage firm to forestall them from persevering with to prey on the policyholders and property house owners in Florida.’
That very same month, the American Policyholder Affiliation, a nonprofit watchdog with a client safety unit led by a former prosecutor, despatched two complaints to regulators alleging that UPC altered claims and advised adjusters to ‘zero out’ harm. The complaints had been despatched to the Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation, which regulates carriers, and the Division of Monetary Providers, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing. The letters, reviewed by The Submit, contained depositions, cellphone interview transcripts, estimates, engineer experiences and emails.
For months, officers on the two businesses punted the proof backwards and forwards, in keeping with the sequence of emails obtained by The Submit spanning from 2021 to proper earlier than Ian hit final yr. In a single a part of the trade, at finish of January 2022, a Division of Monetary Providers investigator confirmed that the company had acquired the proof months in the past, however thought the Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation ought to deal with it. 5 months later, in June, the watchdog checked in. This time, an Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation official mentioned the Division of Monetary Providers ought to deal with it, solely to obtain a response from the Division of Monetary Providers that they’d already mentioned the scenario:
‘If you happen to recall, we spoke a number of weeks in the past about this similar referral and it was determined OIR would initially look into the allegations,’ in keeping with the e-mail, which The Submit obtained from the policyholder affiliation.
The e-mail trade went useless. The Workplace of Insurance coverage Regulation mentioned it didn’t get entangled as a result of it had already been monitoring the corporate for different causes.
My hat is off to the work of the American Policyholder Affiliation (APA) for serving to expose this fraud towards policyholders. The subsequent annual assembly of the APA can be in Dallas on November 1-3.
The Washington Submit and reporter Brianna Sacks ought to be congratulated for his or her follow-up to their earlier article famous in Wanna Make a Wager Whether or not DeSantis/Patronis Insurance coverage Firm Investigation Finds Extra Corruption Than One Washington Submit Reporter Will Discover. The Washington Submit gained that guess.
Thought For A Friday Afternoon
Newspapers which might be actually unbiased, like The Washington Submit, can nonetheless aggressively examine anybody or something with no holds barred.
—Bob Woodward
1 Brianna Sacks. How Florida let a prime insurer abandon owners of their time of best want. Washington Submit. Aug. 4, 2023. Obtainable on-line at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/08/04/how-florida-let-top-insurer-abandon-homeowners-their-time-greatest-need/ (final seen August 4, 2023).
